Teaching Listening Zhang Lu

1. Teaching Listening Zhang Lu

2. What Do We Listen? In groups of four, discuss what we listen • in real life • in the classroom

3. Why Listening? Again, in groups of four, discuss why we listen • to learn something / to get information • for enjoyment /entertainment • as a part of our participation in social • situations / to be sociable • to exchange views / arguments

4. In principle, the objective of listening comprehension practice in the classroom is that students should learn to function successfully in real-life listening situations. Penny Ur

5. 1. What are some of the factors that affect the listening process? 2. What is known about the listening process? 3. Designing listening activities for the classroom.

6. 1. What are some of the factors that affect listening process? • The speaker • The listener • The content • Visual support

7. What are some of the factors that affect listening process? – The Speaker • It covers such factors as the number of speakers, the speed at which they speak, the degree of overlapping in their speech, the variation in accents, colloquial language and reduced forms they use, etc. • Colloquial language and reduced forms make comprehension more difficult. • The more exposure the listener has to them , the greater the ability to comprehend. • Awareness of a speaker’s corrections and use of rehearsing (“er…”“I mean…”“that is …”) can assist the listener. • Listeners need practice in recognizing these speech habits as clues to deciphering meaning.

8. What are some of the factors that affect listening process? – The Listener • Interest in the topic increases the listeners’ comprehension; the listener may tune out topics that are not of interest. • A listener who is an active participant in a conversation generally has more background knowledge to facilitate understanding of the topic.

9. What are some of the factors that affect listening process? – The Content Content that is familiar is easier to comprehend than content with unfamiliar vocabulary for which the listener has insufficient background knowledge.

10. What are some of the factors that affect listening process? – Visual Support • The support that is given to listeners as they listen. (video, pictures, diagrams, gestures, facial expressions and body language.) • The more the support, the possibility for listeners to create comprehension

11. 2. What is known about the listening process? a.Bottom-up processing b.Top-down processing

12. What is known about the listening process? - Bottom-up processing It refers to deriving the meaning of the text based on the incoming language data, from sound, to word, to grammatical relationships, to meaning. In other words, it is a process of identifying sounds, imposing structure, inferring meaning and anticipating what comes next. Stress, rhythm and intonation also play a role in bottom-up processing.

13. What is known about the listening process? - Top-down processing It refers to utilizing background knowledge and global understanding to derive meaning from and interpret the text.

14. What is known about the listening process? - Summary These days, it is generally recognized that both bottom-up and top-down strategies are necessary. In developing courses, materials and lessons, it is important, not only to teach bottom-up processing skills, but it is also important to help students use what they already know to understand listening texts.

15. 3. Designing listening activities for the classroom • Pre-listening activities b. While-listening activities c. post-listening activities

16. Play the cassette. • Relate topic to students’ interests and set the scene. • Do follow-up work. • Pre-teach essential vocabulary. • Check the students have performed the task satisfactorily. • Get students to compare answers in pairs. • Have group feedback and invite groups to agree or disagree. • Check that students are completing • Prepare students to listen. • Set the listening task carefully and check students know what they have to do. • The teacher confirms correct answers, if necessary. • From your monitoring, decide whether to play the cassette again. (2, 4, 10, 9, 1, 8, 12, 5, 6, 7, 11, 3) Pre-listening: 2, 4, 10, 9 While-listening: 1, 5, 6, 8, 12 Post-listening: 3, 7, 11

17. Designing listening activities for the classroom - Pre-listening activities (1) • The pre-listening stage is to introduce enough about the topic, type of text or purpose for listening in order to activate the students’ schema and get them ready to predict what they will hear and make sense of it. • Pre-listening activities serve not only to assist with comprehension but also to motivate students to want to listen.

18. Designing listening activities for the classroom - Pre-listening activities (2) Ideas for pre-listening activities • Looking at the pictures /tittles /diagrams/chart etc. before listening • Making lists of possibilities/ideas/suggestions/etc • Reading a text before listening • Reading through questions (to be answered while listening) • Labeling a picture • Predicting/speculating • Informal teacher and class discussion

19. Designing listening activities for the classroom - While-listening activities (1) • The period in which students actually carry out all the activities while the teacher observes and operates the machine. • The activities is for students to employ a certain listening skill: listening for gist, listening for specific information, listening for detail, and inferring. • Whatever activities you choose to use, it’s important to provide immediate feedback on whether, and to what extent, the students have succeeded in the task(s).

20. Designing listening activities for the classroom - While-listening activities (2) Ideas for while-listening activities • Making/checking items in pictures. • Which picture? • Storyline picture sets. • Putting pictures in order. • Completing pictures. • Picture drawing. • Carrying out actions. • Following a route. • Form/chart completion. • Labeling. • T/F • Multiple choice questions. • Text completion. • Spotting mistakes. • Seeking specific items of information.

21. Designing listening activities for the classroom - Post-listening activities (1) • The last period of a listening class. It is to consolidate what has been learned by the students, whether they can use the new information and language gained from their listening in a different context and connect it with the language they already have.

22. Designing listening activities for the classroom - Post-listening activities (2) Ideas for post-listening activities • Matching with a reading text. • Re-telling the listening text. • Using information from the listening text for problem-solving and decision making activities. • Establishing the mood/attitude/behavior of the speaker. • Identifying relationships between speakers. • Role-play

23. Summary Assisting students in the development of listening comprehension is a challenge. It is a challenge that demands both the teachers and students attention because of the critical role that listening plays, not only in communication, but also in the acquisition of language. Knowledge of the listening process and factors that affect listening enable teachers to select or create listening texts and activities that meet the needs of our students. Teacher, then, must weave these listening activities into the lessons to create a balance that mirrors the real-world integration of listening with speaking, reading, and writing.